Priorities
by Matrix Refugee
Summary: An ordinary day in the reality of the CEO of a software company...until something changes. This is my observation on the WTC attack.


priorities

+J.M.J.+

Priorities

by "Matrix Refugee"

Disclaimer:

I do not "own" the world of _The Matrix_; the characters are essentially my "creation". All resemblance to any (philosophically) existing or ontologically challenged person(s) is purely coincidental. But the events were intended only to be the author's opinion of current affairs as they stand.

Author's note: 

I wrote this following a major confrontation with my boss, so if it sounds a little "Nuts-to-you-too,-Mr.-Finkelsteen", it is purely intentional. I have no idea where exactly this story came from; the words just flowed out of my pencil.

Sunlight gleamed off the steel and glass tower, warming the concrete to white heat. But cool air flowed abundant on the safe side of the tinted glass.

Kevin MacLaine, CEO of DiGianTech, sat at his desk, sorting his paper mail. As usual, some of Penman's mail had strayed into his bundle. He looked out through the open door of his office. A secretary passed by.

"Ms. Obeler? Do you know anything about this?" He held up the errant envelopes.

Ms. Obeler stepped through the doorway and goggled at the envelopes. She shook her head.

"I don't know: you'll have to ask Berlin."

"Ask Berlin," he murmured. He stood up and pushed past her. Going out into the hallway. He headed for the rows and rows of cubicles. He scanned the human forms in each square space, each human working, bent over their keyboards. He watched for movement down the passage.

Sure enough, he spotted Berlin, the mailroom clerk. She made it impossible for him to overlook her, with her tastefully cut black leather blouse over a black skirt and black shoes too high to be shoes and too low to be boots--testing the limits of the office dress code. She pushed her mail trolley along, pausing to hand a sheaf of mail to each occupant of each cubicle. She lingered here and there, chatting with a few workers, exchanging news before passing on to the next cubicle.\par

He caught up with her. "Miss Berlin?"

"Yeah, Mr. MacLaine?" She looked him in the eye, dead on a level, holding herself straighter than necessary, so that she looked more than human.

"When you're finished with your work, could you come to my office?"

"Sure." As she said this, she turned away and cocked on hip at him as if to say, "Kiss my rear while you're at it."

He returned to his office. 9:15 showed on the clock on monitor and wall.

He opened his mail--HIS mail--while he waited for Berlin to come crawling in, not that she would ever actually crawl. Only in his dreams. Why he always ended up with the surly mailroom clerks fell beyond the pale of his understanding. He'd never understand it, not if he lived to be a hundred years, and with the economy slowing like this, he just might not live to be a hundred.

The mailroom trolley clattered to a halt outside his door. Berlin swung into the room, taking the floor in two long strides. She folded her arms loosely behind her back and settled onto one hip. Her eyelids relaxed and a faint smile dared to show itself at the corners of her mouth.

"Berlin, can you tell me why I am still getting Penman's mail?"

"Excuse me?"

"Penman's mail. This is the third day in three months that you've given me the wrong mail."

She started to open her mouth for an excuse, but he beat her to it. "I try to run an efficient business. I ask only that everything run like clockwork, like the binary current flowing through the circuits and memory chips of a computer. You understand?"\par

"Yes, Mr. MacLaine."

"And in order for the current to keep flowing smoothly, I need my paper mail delivered to me in an orderly, efficient manner. That means Penman gets his mail and only his mail, and I get my mail and only my mail."

"Yes, Mr. MacLaine, I understand."

"And this will never happen again?"

"I'll avoid it as much as I can."

"No, I want your word. It will never happen again, will it?"

She breathed audibly through her nostrils. "As far as a human can--"

"No, no, you don't understand me. I want--no, this company needs perfection--"

Something screamed out of the clear blue sky. A black shadow eclipsed the sun-flooded window. The building shook like a tree in a hurricane blast. Lights went out. The computer monitor zapped off. A great rending, wrenching screech knifed through their ears.

The floor listed under their feet. His desk slid slightly toward the door. Berlin stepped out of its way, breathing deep, her eyes wide-open. Office workers ran screaming past the open doorway. A heavy acrid stench, like diesel scorched his nostrils along with the smoke that seeped into the room.

MacLaine dropped the letters to the floor. He bolted for the door, knocking Berlin down as he rushed out.

"Ouch, dammit! Watch where you're going!" Berlin shouted, jumping to her feet.

He ran for the front entrance, but the crumpled fuselage of a jet laterally blocked what remained of the front hallway.\par

He rushed back down the hallway, pushing workers out of his way. The back entrance. He had to get to the back entrance before anyone else. Before that plane blew.

He passed Berlin among the cubicles. She dialled a phone.

"Are you crazy? what are you doing? Calling 911? They can't help us!" He rasped.

Berlin ignored him. She paced back and forth in the cubicle like a caged black panther. He dimly heard the line ringing.

"Loosh, get me out of here, fast! They changed something big time! If anyone else is in here, get them out! Broadband it!"

She looked up. Her tawny face paled, but her eyes stayed firm.

Three tall figures approched from the smoky hallway. Three men in dark suits. Sunglasses even indoors. Wired with earpieces. They advanced down the passage between the cubicles. Berlin crouched over the phone.

And suddenly her black-clad body dissolved in a cloud of...code. Green code that faded into a thousand green sparks. The phone hung poised in midair for a second, then clattered to the floor.

The three men walked past MacLaine. The tallest stooped and picked up the receiver. He looked at the other two and banged the receiver onto the base.

"She escaped this time, but they won't be using this hardline any more," he said.

The floor rumbled under MacLaine's feet. Poisonous black smoke engulfed him and the three Feds.

Explosions blasted out his eardrums. The floor burst like an overblown tire. He hurtled through space, empty except for heat and smoke.

He landed, hard, on concrete. He looked up for a moment at the blue sky. Not a cloud drifted overhead, but the black clouds pouring from the silver tower comnpensated.

He lifted one hand before his eyes. Black soot and black charred flesh marred his hand. He let it drop beside him.

A shrill buzzing filled his ears, ringing and wailing like sirens. He hoped someone had called the paramedics. He looked around, but the light faded from his eyes. He felt blood running sticky over his face and body, filling his eyes with red.

It grew colder and darker. He opened his eyes and looked down.

A red pod, like a fruit or a womb, hung suspended below him, its upper end socketed into a half-metallic, half-chitinous column. The outer suface of the pod shone clear, as if the red came from the the gelatinopus substance that filled it.\par

Something stirred inside the gel.

A human form.

Himself.

He barely recognized himself. Snake-like coaxials coiled about his body, socketed into plugs on his arms and legs, into his mouth, around his genitals and rectum, around his legs.

His body shuddered. The buzzing grew louder. MacLaine's spirit looked around.

A forest of gunmetal grey columns dominated the blasted land, stretching up into the boiled black sky. Story after story, tier after tier of red pods fanned out from the columns, millions upon millions, each with its human occupant.

A spider-shaped thing dropped past him, as if out of nowhere. It cut open the pod and siezed his body around the neck with metal jaws. For a moment it poised over its prey. Then another set of pincers cut the cable at the back of his neck. It released him as a metal iris at the back of the pod opened and flushed out his corpse, aborting it from the system.

The creature dropped down onto another pod. More of them lurched into action on other pods all over the tower.

And with his first though in the real world, Kevin MacLaine saw and understood the truth. His body passed on to one hell, a material hell on earth where it would be consumed, while his soul would pass on to another hell, worse than the first.

Aboard the hovercraft _Gilgamesh_, Refugee shivered, a ragged blanket wrapped about her. Her crewmates surrounded her.

"You did your best; you couldn't have seen it coming," Arthax, the commander said, trying to reassure her. "Everyone has a rough shift sooner or later. But you did well, you kept your head." 

"Coulda been a lot worse," Roach, the runt of the crew put in. "Hey, you came out unhurt, all in one piece. More'n some people can say right now, hey?"

"They were right after me. I know they got him."

"No, they wouldn't have gone after him. You were lucky they didn't get ther chance to use him against you," said Luk, the mech-repairman.

"You'd better rest; you've had a bad scare and it's disrupted your mind," Arthax said, helping her to her feet and leading her to her cabin. "I'll send someone to check on you later."

As soon as he went away, Refugee collapsed on her bunk. Her head rang from the explosion and the jacks in her legs and arms tingled painfully, the way they always did after a shift. She rubbed the back of her neck, fingering the big jack there, wishing she could claw it out, but her fingers stung.

She closed her eyes. And for the first time in the real world, she prayed for and forgave the soul of a man who might have been her enemy.


End file.
